Telugu in 30 Seconds A Day

Here's me and Rakesh, the Indian guy who works at the DFAC's front door. He is responsible for checking people in, making sure we swipe our badges, etc. He doesn't always wear that hat - it was Indian Food Night when we took this picture, so he dressed up.

Anyway, for the past few months he's been giving me Telugu lessons in 30-second increments, three times a day.

What's that? You haven't heard of Telugu? No, it's not some cool martial art. It's a central Dravidian language spoken in India. With 70 million native speakers, it's number 15 on Wikipedia's list of languages by number of native speakers (English is #3, behind Mandarin and Spanish).

So far, I've learned to say good morning (suprabad), good afternoon (mhedi anum) and good evening (siam car). I can say How are you? (baghanara?)and I am fine (baghananu). I can even say I am very, very good (challa challa baghananu). Spelling is all approximate, of course - it's not like I have a text book or anything. And Rakesh has told me about many more words, but that list is pretty much the only ones I really remember.

Rakesh is an enthusiastic teacher and I've really enjoyed our brief interactions. Just one more under-reported benefit of life here at ISAF.

UPDATE: I emailed the picture to Rakesh and he told me the next day he posted it on his FB page and got lots of comments. That's pretty awesome.